Congress wants to Ban Junk Food in Schools
The obesity rate of students jumped four percent, from 14% to 18%, in four years, according to the Centers for Disease Control. (No need to document this, we all see for ourselves that this is true. But, here is the supporting link.)
http://tinyurl.com/hazdz
While the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee (I'm not making this "Forestry" part up) ponders the danger of close to 1/5 of our children being on the brink of long-term health problems, we should wonder how so many high-sugar, high-salt, high-fat, caffeine-laced "food stuffs" get into our schools in the first place.
Second, we should wonder if schools are the only place that our kids get to eat this stuff?
Consider a study in NYC that determined that 25% of toddlers are obese and that 40% are too heavy for their age. This issue was most acute among children from lower socioeconomic homes. Why?
http://tinyurl.com/lkty5
Then, we should wonder "who's job it is to teach children what to eat?"
And finally, we might ask "Does lack of exercise also play a part in this problem?" (That is, unless we belong to the Food Products Association, and believe that non-nutritive food stuffs [no pun intended] has to be present in schools so that children can learn right from wrong [about eating].)
Maybe "No Child Left Behind" means that they are too heavy to run and can't keep up.
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Maybe the new federal law outlawing non-nutritive food should be called, "No child with a big behind."
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And since teacher use these products to increase alertness to compensate for a lack of sleep, perhaps the feds should pass a law making it illegal for teachers to grade papers past 8:00 p.m. local time.
This is a serious subject, but there are all levels of complicity from the disobedient little tyke that buys a soda and ice cream with the lunch money that his or her parents provided that morning, to the parents, teachers, administrators and school boards who could have cooperated to keep the vending machines and al a carte lines out of our schools in the first place.
Instead, non-nutritive stuffs [sic] are viewed by all stakeholders as a "victimless revenue stream." Well, at least most of the overweight tykes won't suffer heart attacks and strokes at school. They will reap that reward later, in middle age when no one will make the connection to early school years.
In a convoluted way, vending machines in schools is a solution designed to solve a social problem; i.e., lack of proper funding and lack of proper management in our schools.
The Chinese (Communists) had a similar solution for their old age/ retirement system. Their gross national product could not afford pensions for a huge population of old people. Their solution: make cigarettes almost free and addict the country. That way, huge numbers of people will die from lung cancer and won't be able to collect a pension.
We need to get money from somewhere seems to be a similar rationale to support installing vending machines for non-nutritive food stuffs in our schools.
See our Feature article "The Stripes, Spots, and Yellow Streaks of School District Stakeholders" in this issue for an elaboration on the topic of doing what is best for our children.
